The invention relates to apparatus for gathering a textile fibre fleece adapted to be taken off a doffer of a card to thereby form a fibre sliver, and for feeding the fibre sliver to a conveyor for storage or further processing. An apparatus of this type is not known from prior art.
Known devices are only of the type requiring the fibre fleece to be manually gathered at the take-off location, for instance a take-off roller. The thus formed card web has then to be carefully twisted to a fine point permitting it to be introduced into the small round opening of a funnel disposed upstream of a calender roller pair. This procedure is usually rather time-consuming and troublesome. It has to be frequently repeated during operation of the machines, requiring the machines to be capable of low-speed operation. The known apparatus also suffers from the additional disadvantage that the doffed fibre fleece or the card web, respectively, is guided in the open, so that dust particles and short fibres escape to the environment, rendering it practically impossible to comply with environment protection regulations. The known apparatus is moreover susceptible to frequent fleece rupture, resulting in extended downtime of the installation.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to improve the known apparatus in such a manner that it is capable of automatically gather the fibre fleece doffed from the card to form a fibre sliver, and of automatically feeding this fibre sliver to a conveyor, so that fleece ruptures are substantially avoidable.